Disruptive students are being enabled to cause mayhem in classrooms

Irish Times

12-05-2025

So many parents and teachers leave a principal's office feeling firewalled over the behaviour of a small cohort of hardcore, disruptive students. Why?
Let's get the obvious out of the way first. The principal of a school does the Department of Education's bidding. Lacklustre consequences for hardcore disrupters is hardly in the interests of the main body of students, never mind the morale of the teaching staff, who witness a merry-go-round of ineffective dead-ends posing as 'consequences'.
So, what is the problem with identifying these students as being the bane of everyone's educational life? Why are they being enabled to cause mayhem?
Come into a secondary school in Ireland and you'll find out. In order for a consequence to justify calling itself a consequence, it needs to be something that matters to the recipient. And this is where the Government is failing the vast majority of students.
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The 'blue book' (a weeklong naughty or nice list) is the end of the line on discipline, along with an equally irrelevant detention booking. Save for a drug-related or sexual offence committed by a student, discipline in Irish secondary schools is a merry-go-round of nonsense. Thankfully, the majority of students are fine individuals and don't test that theory too much.
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It's a sad reality that in the world of 2025, Ireland has a small cohort of highly problematic students in our schools who are known to gardaí. How effective do you think a 'blue book' of teachers declaring whether a student of this type was naughty or nice is to these kinds of students?
It's a week-long sticking plaster, if even that. Year heads throughout the country have no other tools at their disposal. Sadly, as long as they've ticked the box of the blue book, many of them don't care. They have been numbed by their lack of autonomy on discipline and their immediate boss's need to have a clean look for the school (on paper). The result is that these hardcore disrupters are being pinged back into the learning space to dismantle student and teacher morale and disrupt the learning of the main body of students – with absolutely no change in their actual behaviour.
This uninspired one-size-fits-all approach to discipline is the Department of Education's preferred approach. It believes it is the right thing to do because hardcore disrupters are entitled to an education. The problem is that their purpose in coming to school is the polar opposite of getting themselves an education (but we'll not say too much about that in case we upset them).
Don't believe me? When was the last time you heard of a parent successfully bringing an action against a school over safety concerns for their child? For every injustice a student receives in our education system that actually makes it into the public domain or the High Court, there are thousands more who were firewalled by the school leadership team.
Many of these parents reading this article today may be feeling terribly alone. I'm here to tell you, you're not alone. Teachers, too, have been silenced on behaviour concerns. Reprisals from the school's senior leaders or the hardcore disrupter's family are often the reasons why a teacher gives up.
Have a listen out for how many classes your child has had supervised, or how many teachers are out sick, and you'll get a good idea of the culture at the school. If your child doesn't like going to school, you can take some comfort from the state of the teaching staff's attendance.
Teachers' absences, sicknesses and resignations are a direct performance review for the principal and his or her deputies. Your child's not crazy; your child is not necessarily abnormally anxious; they are not being protected, and they can pick up on that.
Perhaps it's time to target our anger at the generals who devised a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with discipline. We all know that doesn't work, ever, but it's cheap
Can we all agree there is zero point in shooting the foot soldiers? It is easy to take things out on teachers, but they are not in a position to change their directives. We may even be targeting principals unfairly as they, too, are simply following orders, though many of the more humane ones find ways to protect the students and their staff from the ineptitude of current discipline policy.
It's time for every secondary school in Ireland to have a 'learn to learn' room. The type of non-stop disruption we are dealing with from a certain cohort of students needs its audience taken away from it. These students thrive on the damage they cause being witnessed.
Being taught basic manners including 'please' and 'thank you', putting their chair in after themselves, understanding the importance of punctuality and a strong work ethic are perfectly reasonable expectations. And they could learn that in the 'learn to learn' room – without the spectators they so rely on.
Perhaps it's time to target our anger at the generals who devised a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with discipline. We all know that doesn't work, ever, but it's cheap.
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If you are a parent who has fallen foul of this, please know the teachers are your friends. In fact, when you think about it, the parents and teachers are the only two groups of people whose sole interest is the student and a happy school. Every single other stakeholder has their finger in another pie or two.
Is it time to reinvent the parent-teacher association, to take it away from bake sales and towards a policy watchdog? We need to challenge the sterile, anaemic approach to protecting the school community from those who are there to do it harm. It takes courage to stop pretending something isn't true. There are plenty of warning signs right now that things need tightening up. Does Minister for Education
Helen McEntee
have what it takes to act?